Joe Ortiz' THE END TIMES PASSOVER! This is one of Joe's blog sites which is the title to one of his books that refute the Rapture to Heaven mythology. Ours is "Empowerment" theology, Not "Replacement" ~
The Old Testament church was not to be replaced, but it would be embolden. (Matthew 16:18; Isa. 49:13-23; 60:1 4). "Every word of God is pure: He is a shield unto them that put their trust in him. 6 Add thou not unto his words, lest he reprove thee, and thou be found a liar, (Proverbs 30:5-6)."

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Sunday, February 10, 2013

One of the main problems in convincing the Israelites any truth that Jesus is their true Messiah is obvious by the proven fact that they daily teach their followers not
only a different theological doctrine (which they call the Torah, five books gleaned from the Old Testament), but also a blasphemous lie that their rabbinical leaders and other authors maintain that the Israeli people are more
important than God Himself. The arrogance of this nation's leaders is built on its (taught) belief it is far superior to the Goyim Gentiles (whom they view as
cattle), but most oftentimes they teach their adherents that God actually works
for them. It's obviously difficult to share or have any scholarly discussion with them because (although Christians read and study the same books they call "The Torah"), their doctrine is skewed more by injecting and inferring their view rather than studying the actual word of God!

Following is an article that appeared in the web site The Algemeiner on January 2, 2013. It will become evident that the Israeli belief system entails its claim that they are more
important than other nations due to their belief that they are the chosen
children of God and that status supposedly comes with a confirmation they are far superior to
any other peoples. The clever part of this following article is the manner in which it is
written, appearing to be biblical in nature by virtue that the author quotes much scripture,
albeit the Bible verses quoted in this article are not only paraphrased but distorted or changed completely to suit his polemic:

Who Is A Jewish Leader?

By Chief Rabbi Lord Jonathan Sacks

The sedra (Bible portion) of Shemot, in a series of
finely etched vignettes, paints a portrait of the life of Moses, culminating in
the moment at which G-d appears to him in the bush that burns without being
consumed. It is a key text of the Torah (Bible) view of leadership, and every
detail is significant. I want here to focus on just one passage in the long
dialogue in which G-d summons Moses to undertake the mission of leading the Israelites
to freedom – a challenge which, no less than four times, Moses declines. I am
unworthy, he says. I am not a man of words. Send someone else. It is the second
refusal, however, which attracted special attention from the sages and led them
to formulate one of their most radical interpretations. The Torah states:

Moses replied: “But they will not believe me. They will
not listen to me. They will say, ‘G-d did not appear to you’.” (4:1)

The sages, ultra-sensitive to nuances in the text,
evidently noticed three strange features of this response. The first is that
G-d had already told Moses, “They will listen to you” (3:18). Moses’ reply
seems to contradict G-d’s prior assurance. To be sure, the commentators offered
various harmonizing interpretations. Ibn Ezra suggests that G-d had told Moses
that the elders would listen to him, whereas Moses expressed doubts about the
mass of the people. Ramban says that Moses did not doubt that they would
believe initially, but he thought that they would lose faith as soon as they
saw that Pharaoh would not let them go. There are other explanations, but the
fact remains that Moses was not satisfied by G-d’s assurance. His own
experience of the fickleness of the people (one of them, years earlier, had
already said, “Who made you ruler and judge over us?”) made him doubt that they
would be easy to lead.

The second anomaly is in the signs that G-d gave Moses
to authenticate his mission. The first (the staff that turns into a snake) and
third (the water that turned into blood) reappear later in the story. They are
signs that Moses and Aaron perform not only for the Israelites but also for the
Egyptians. The second, however, does not reappear. G-d tells Moses to put his
hand in his cloak. When he takes it out he sees that it has become “leprous as
snow”. What is the significance of this particular sign? The sages recalled
that later, Miriam was punished with leprosy for speaking negatively about
Moses (Bamidbar 12:10). In general they understood leprosy as a punishment for
lashon hara, derogatory speech. Had Moses, perhaps, been guilty of the same
sin?

The third detail is that, whereas Moses’ other refusals
focused on his own sense of inadequacy; here he speaks not about himself but
about the people. They will not believe him. Putting these three points
together, the sages arrived at the following comment:

Resh Lakish said: He who entertains a suspicion against
the innocent will be bodily afflicted, as it is written, Moses replied: But
they will not believe me. However, it was known to the Holy One blessed be He,
that Israel would believe. He said to
Moses: They are believers, the children of believers, but you will ultimately
disbelieve. They are believers, as it is written, and the people believed (Ex.
4: 31). The children of believers [as it is written], and he [Abraham] believed
in the Lord. But you will ultimately disbelieve, as it is said, [And the Lord
said to Moses] Because you did not believe in Me (Num. 20:12). How do
we know that he was afflicted? Because it is written, And the Lord said to him,
Put your hand inside your cloak . . . (Ex. 4:6). (B.T. Shabbat 97a)

This is
an extraordinary passage. Moses, it now becomes clear, was entitled to have
doubts about his own worthiness for the task. What he was not entitled to do
was to have doubts about the people. In fact, his doubts were amply justified.
The people were fractious. Moses calls them a “stiff necked people”. Time and
again during the wilderness years they complained, sinned, and wanted to return
to Egypt. Moses was not wrong in his estimate of their character. Yet G-d
reprimanded him; indeed punished him by making his hand leprous. A fundamental
principle of Jewish leadership is intimated here for the first time: a leader
does not need faith in himself, but he must have faith in the people he is to
lead.

This is
an exceptionally important idea. The political philosopher Michael Walzer has
written insightfully about social criticism, in particular about two stances
the critic may take vis-à-vis those he criticizes. On the one hand there
is the critic as outsider. At some stage, beginning in ancient Greece:

Detachment
was added to defiance in the self-portrait of the hero. The impulse was
Platonic; later on it was Stoic and Christian. Now the critical enterprise was
said to require that one leave the city, imagined for the sake of the departure
as a darkened cave, find one’s way, alone, outside, to the illumination of
Truth, and only then return to examine and reprove the inhabitants. The
critic-who-returns doesn’t engage the people as kin; he looks at them with a
new objectivity; they are strangers to his new-found Truth.

This is
the critic as detached intellectual. The prophets of Israel were quite
different. Their message, writes Johannes Lindblom, was “characterized by the
principle of solidarity”. “They are rooted, for all their anger, in their
own societies,” writes Walzer. Like the Shunamite woman (Kings 2 4:13), their
home is “among their own people”. They speak, not from outside, but from
within. That is what gives their words power. They identify with those to whom
they speak. They share their history, their fate, their calling, their
covenant. Hence the peculiar pathos of the prophetic calling. They are the
voice of G-d to the people, but they are also the voice of the people to G-d.
That, according to the sages, was what G-d was teaching Moses: What matters is not whether they believe in
you, but whether you believe in them. Unless you believe in them, you cannot
lead in the way a prophet must lead. You must identify with them and have faith
in them, seeing not only their surface faults but also their underlying
virtues. Otherwise, you will be no better than a detached intellectual – and
that is the beginning of the end. If you do not believe in the people,
eventually you will not even believe in G-d. You will think yourself
superior to them, and that is a corruption of the soul.

The
classic text on this theme is Maimonides’ Epistle on Martyrdom. Written in
1165, when Maimonides was thirty years old, it was occasioned by a tragic
period in medieval Jewish history when an extremist Muslim sect, the Almohads,
forced many Jews to convert to Islam under threat of death. One of the forced
converts (they were called anusim; later they became known as marranos) asked a
rabbi whether he might gain merit by practicing as many of the
Torah’s commands as he could in secret. The rabbi sent back a dismissive reply.
Now that he had forsaken his faith, he wrote, he would achieve nothing by
living secretly as a Jew. Any Jewish act he performed would not be a merit but
an additional sin.

Maimonides’
Epistle is a work of surpassing spiritual beauty. He utterly rejects the
rabbi’s reply. Those who keep Judaism in secret are to be praised, not blamed.
He quotes a whole series of rabbinic passages in which G-d rebukes prophets
who criticized the people of Israel, including the one above about
Moses. He then writes:

If this
is the sort of punishment meted out to the pillars of the universe – Moses,
Elijah, Isaiah, and the ministering angels – because they briefly criticized
the Jewish congregation, can one have an idea of the fate of the least among
the worthless [i.e. the rabbi who criticized the forced converts] who let his
tongue loose against Jewish communities of sages and their disciples, priests
and Levites, and called them sinners, evildoers, gentiles, disqualified to
testify, and heretics who deny the Lord G-d of Israel?

The
Epistle is a definitive expression of the prophetic task: to speak out of love
for one’s people; to defend them, see the good in them, and raise them to
higher achievements through praise, not condemnation.

Who
is a leader? To this, the Jewish answer is, one who identifies with his or her
people, mindful of their faults, to be sure, but convinced also of their
potential greatness and their preciousness in the sight of G-d. “Those people of whom you have doubts,”
said G-d to Moses, “are believers, the children of believers. They are My
people, and they are your people. Just as you believe in Me, so you must
believe in them.”

To read more writings and teachings from
the Chief Rabbi Lord Jonathan Sacks, please visit www.chiefrabbi.org.

Now, contrast what
you have read above with what is actually written in the Bible:

Signs for Moses

Exodus 4 Moses answered, “What
if they do not believe me or listen to me and say, ‘The Lord did not appear to you’?”

2 Then the Lord said to him, “What is that in
your hand?”

“A
staff,” he replied.

3 The Lord said, “Throw it on the
ground.”

Moses
threw it on the ground and it became a snake, and he ran from it. 4 Then the Lord said to him, “Reach out your
hand and take it by the tail.” So Moses reached out and took hold of the snake
and it turned back into a staff in his hand. 5 “This,” said
the Lord, “is so that they
may believe that the Lord,
the God of their fathers—the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac and the God of
Jacob—has appeared to you.”

6 Then the Lord said, “Put your hand inside
your cloak.” So Moses put his hand into his cloak, and when he took it out, the
skin was leprous[a]—it had become as
white as snow.

7 “Now put it back into
your cloak,” he said. So Moses put his hand back into his cloak, and when he
took it out, it was restored, like the rest of his flesh.

8 Then the Lord said, “If they do not
believe you or pay attention to the first sign, they may believe the
second. 9 But if they do not
believe these two signs or listen to you, take some water from the Nile and
pour it on the dry ground. The water you take from the river will become
blood on the ground.”

10 Moses said to
the Lord, “Pardon your
servant, Lord. I have never been eloquent, neither in the past nor since you
have spoken to your servant. I am slow of speech and tongue.”

11 The Lord said to him, “Who gave human
beings their mouths? Who makes them deaf or mute? Who gives them sight or
makes them blind? Is it not I, the Lord? 12 Now go; I will
help you speak and will teach you what to say.”

14 Then the Lord’s anger burned against Moses
and he said, “What about your brother, Aaron the Levite? I know he can speak
well. He is already on his way to meet you, and he will be glad to see
you. 15 You shall speak to
him and put words in his mouth; I will help both of you speak and will
teach you what to do. 16 He will speak to the
people for you, and it will be as if he were your mouth and as if you were
God to him. 17 But take this
staff in your hand so you can perform the signs with it.”

Moses Returns to
Egypt

18 Then Moses went back
to Jethro his father-in-law and said to him, “Let me return to my own people in
Egypt to see if any of them are still alive.”

Jethro
said, “Go, and I wish you well.”

19 Now the Lord had said to Moses in Midian,
“Go back to Egypt, for all those who wanted to kill you are dead.” 20 So Moses took his
wife and sons, put them on a donkey and started back to Egypt. And he took
the staff of God in his hand.

21 The Lord said to Moses, “When you
return to Egypt, see that you perform before Pharaoh all the wonders I
have given you the power to do. But I will harden his heart so that he
will not let the people go. 22 Then say to Pharaoh,
‘This is what the Lord says:
Israel is my firstborn son, 23 and I told you, “Let
my son go, so he may worship me.” But you refused to let him go; so I
will kill your firstborn son.’”

24 At a lodging place on
the way, the Lord met
Moses[b] and was about
to kill him. 25 But Zipporah took
a flint knife, cut off her son’s foreskin and touched Moses’ feet with it.[c] “Surely you are
a bridegroom of blood to me,” she said.26 So the Lord let him alone. (At that time
she said “bridegroom of blood,” referring to circumcision.)

27 The Lord said to Aaron, “Go into the
wilderness to meet Moses.” So he met Moses at the mountain of God and
kissed him. 28 Then Moses told Aaron
everything the Lord had
sent him to say, and also about all the signs he had commanded him to perform.

29 Moses and Aaron
brought together all the elders of the Israelites, 30 and Aaron told them
everything the Lord had
said to Moses. He also performed the signs before the people, 31 and they
believed. And when they heard
that the Lord was
concerned about them and had seen their misery, they bowed down and
worshiped, (Exodus 4:1-31).

It
is obvious when one examines verse 31 that it does not state that that the
Israelites believed whatsoever. The good Rabbi cleverly inserts the name of
Abraham (who did believe) as if to say that because Abraham believed all of His
descendants believed as well: . He said to
Moses: They are believers, the children of believers, but you will ultimately
disbelieve. They are believers, as it is written, and the people believed (Ex.
4: 31). The children of believers [as it is written], and he [Abraham] believed
in the Lord.

Sadly,
many Christian teachers, authors and evangelists use these same tactics when
dealing with the Gospel of Jesus Christ. It’s no wonder American Christians
(especially) are berserk with their own interpretations of the Bible because
they believe their teachers before they believe in the specific word of God.

[For
more information about the author’s books, web sites and blogs, please click on
Joe Ortiz]

On September 12th, following the
tragic news of the murder of Ambassador Stevens, together with members of his
staff, sheltering in the US Consulate in Benghazi, a grief stricken Secretary
of State, Hilary Clinton asked a simple question. A question that was on the
lips of many Americans: “How could this happen in a country we helped liberate,
in a city we helped save from destruction?” Andrew Bacevich, writing in
Newsweek, asks,

“Why the Arab anger against
the United States? Why the absence of gratitude among the very people the United
States helped save, in the very countries Americans helped liberate? The way
Secretary Clinton frames the question practically guarantees a self-satisfying
but defective answer.”

The question, he argues, is
predicated on three propositions that are regarded as sacrosanct by most US
politicians and policy makers.

“First: humanity yearns for liberation, as defined in Western
(meaning predominantly liberal and secular terms). Second: the United States
has a providentially assigned role to nurture and promote this liberation…
Third: given that American intentions are righteous and benign (most of the
time) – the exercise of US power on a global scale merits respect and ought to
command compliance.”[i]

I would add a fourth
proposition, assumed as self evident, especially among Evangelicals, that, as
God’s ‘chosen people’ the security of the State of Israel is synonymous with US
interests in the Middle East and her God ordained role.

The problem is that the Arab world and Muslims, in particular,
do not only not share these propositions, they repudiate them theologically. It
is not that they do not aspire to political freedom from despotic rulers and
oppressive governments. The Arab Spring has shown that many do indeed hunger
for freedom. The problem is, observes Bacevich, “that 21stcentury Muslims don’t necessarily buy America’s 21stcentury
definition of it – a definition increasingly devoid of moral content.”

Freedom of speech is assumed sacrosanct even if it offends those
of other religions. Whether the movie,Innocence of Muslimswas indeed responsible for sparking
Muslim outrage and the subsequent violence against US interests is irrelevant.
The promotion of the film by Fundamentalist Christians and their antipathy
toward Islam certainly is. What we tend to ignore, while Muslims cannot
forget, it the simple fact is that for more than 100 years, Christians in the
USA and Europe have sponsored, defended, funded and sustained the Zionist
enterprise in preference to developing normative relations with the Arab world.

Why else, for example, after 45 years, does Israel continue to
occupy territory in Lebanon, Syria and Palestine?

Why has Israel been able to
develop chemical, biological and nuclear weapons, disregarding every
international treaty, while Iran is threatened with pre-emptive attack for
undertaking nuclear research? Why has Israel been the subject of more UN
Resolutions than any other country in the world? And why has the USA vetoed
virtually every single one of them? Why when the USA has been the pioneer of
the ‘Two State’ solution to the Israel-Palestine conflict, based on the rule of
international law and 1967 borders, did it then deny Palestinians UN
recognition?

Why is there such a close
relationship today between Evangelicals in America and the State of
Israel? The roots of this relationship lie within the Protestant
Reformation which brought about a renewed interest in the Old Testament and
God’s dealings with the Jewish people. After nearly 1500 years, a new
assessment of the place of the Jews within the purposes of God was emerging. We
only have time for a cursory look at some of the individuals and movements who
have shaped our political involvement in the Middle East

2.Adventism
and the End of the World

The late 18thand early 19thcenturies
saw a dramatic paradigm shift from the optimism of postmillennialism to a
deeply pessimistic premillennialism, following a sustained period of turmoil on
both sides of the Atlantic.[ii]There was the American War of
Independence (1775-1784), the French Revolution (1789-1793) and then the
Napoleonic Wars (1809-1815).

In 1804, Louis Napoleon had
been crowned Emperor in the reluctant presence of the Pope. In 1807 he plotted
the division of Europe with the Czar of Russia and began a blockade of British
sea trade with Europe. Two years later he arrested the Pope and annexed the
Papal States. He then began the systematic destruction of the Roman Catholic
Church in France, seizing its assets, executing priests and exiling the Pope
from Rome. By 1815, Napoleon’s armies had fought, invaded or subjugated most of
Europe and the Middle East, including Italy, Austria, Germany, Poland, Russia,
Palestine and Egypt.

His plan was to create a United States of Europe, each state
ruled by a compliant monarch, subject to himself as ‘supreme King of Kings and
Sovereign of the Roman Empire’.[iii]Numerous preachers and
commentators speculated on whether Napoleon was indeed the Antichrist.[iv]Charles Finney, in1835 speculated that
‘If the church will do all her duty, the Millennium may come in this country in
three years.’[v]Joseph Miller narrowed the return of
Christ down to the 21stMarch 1843, while Charles Russell more
prudently predicted that Christ would set up his spiritual kingdom in the
heavenlies in 1914. For many years, Russell’s popular sermons linking biblical
prophecy with contemporary events were reproduced in over 1,500 newspapers in
the USA and Canada.[vi] This sectarian
speculation came to be embraced by mainstream evangelicalism largely through
the influence of John Nelson Darby and others associated with a series of
prophetic conferences held in England and Ireland from 1826 to 1833.[vii]

3. John Nelson Darby and the Rise of
Dispensationalism

John Nelson Darby was a charismatic figure with a dominant
personality. He was a persuasive speaker and zealous missionary for his
conviction that God had a separate plan for the Jewish people apart from the
Church. The churches Darby and his colleagues planted with the seeds of
Premillennial Dispensationalism in turn sent missionaries to Africa, the West
Indies, Australia, New Zealand and, ironically, to work among the Arabs of
Palestine. From 1862 onwards his controlling influence over the Brethren in
Britain waned Darby spent more and more time in North America, making seven
long sea journeys in the next twenty years. During these visits, he came to
have an increasing influence over evangelical leaders. His ideas also helped
shape the emerging evangelical Bible Schools and ‘Prophecy’ conferences, which
came to dominate both Evangelicalism and Fundamentalism in the United States
between 1875 and 1920.[viii] For sake of brevity, I am going
to bypass the role of British politicians and Church leaders in the emergence
of Zionism, relations with the Arab world and most significantly in the Balfour
Declaration. Instead I want to focus on the role of evangelical theology in the
USA.

4. The Rise of Dispensationalism in America
(1859-1945)

During the Colonial period and even beyond the Civil War
(1861-1865), American Christianity, was essentially postmillennial in outlook.
Strengthened by the Wesleyan Holiness movement,[ix]there was a strong focus on evangelism,
personal morality and civil responsibility.[x]The Revolutionary War provided a
stimulus to popular apocalyptic speculation and by 1773, King George III was
being portrayed as the Antichrist and the war a ‘holy crusade’ that would usher
in the millennium.[xi]In parallel with Britain, the late 18thand
early 19thCentury
also saw an explosion of millennial sects including the Shakers, Mormons and
Millerites. Influenced by the French Revolution and the destruction of the
Papacy in France, historic Premillennialism gradually became more popular.
Between 1859 and 1872, resulting from his extensive tours throughout America,
and reinforced by the trauma of the Civil War, Darby’s premillennial
dispensational views about a ‘failing’ Church and revived Israel came to have a
profound and increasing influence upon American Evangelicalism. It resulted not
only in the birth of American Dispensationalism[xii]but also influenced the Millenarianism
associated with the Prophecy Conference Movement, as well as later,
Fundamentalism.[xiii]Darby’s influence on end-time thinking
was ‘perhaps more than that of anyone else in the last two centuries.’[xiv]In the absence of a strong Jewish
Zionist movement, American Christian Zionism arose from the confluence of these
associations, evangelical, premillennial, dispensational, millenarian, and
fundamentalist.[xv]Those most closely influenced by and
associated with Darby were James Brookes, Arno Gaebelein, D. L. Moody, William
E. Blackstone and C. I. Scofield.[xvi]

5. William Blackstone: Recognition of Zionism
(1841-1935)

William E. Blackstone was an influential evangelist and lay
worker for the Methodist Episcopal Church, as well as a financier and
benefactor. He also became an enthusiastic disciple of J.N. Darby.[xvii]In 1887 he wrote a book on biblical
prophecy entitledJesus is Coming, which by 1927,
had been translated into thirty-six languages. The book took a premillennial
dispensational view of the Second Coming, emphasizing that the Jews had a
biblical right to Palestine and would soon be restored there. Blackstone became
one of the first Christian Zionists in America to actively lobby for the
Zionist cause. Blackstone took the Zionist movement to be a ‘sign’ of the
imminent return of Christ even though its leadership like Herzl were agnostic.

Blackstone interpreted Scripture in the light of unfolding
contemporary events, something which Charles Spurgeon warned of as ‘exegesis by
current events’.[xviii]No longer were Christian Zionists
expecting Jewish national repentance to precede restoration; it could wait
until after Jesus returned. Although popular with proto-fundamentalists, the
book became more widely known in 1908, when a presentation edition was sent to
several hundred thousand ministers and Christian workers, and again in 1917
when the Moody Bible Institute printed ‘presentation copies’ and sent them to
ministers, missionaries and theological students.[xix]Jesus
is Comingbecame the
most widely read book on the return of Christ published in the first half of
the 20thCentury.[xx]

In March 1891, Blackstone
lobbied the US President, Benjamin Harrison and his Secretary of State, James
G. Blaine with a petition signed by 413 prominent Jewish and Christian leaders
including John and William Rockefeller. The petition called for an
international conference on the restoration of the Jews to Palestine. The
petition, which became known as the Blackstone Memorial, offered this solution:

‘Why not give Palestine back to them [the Jews] again? According
to God’s distribution of nations it is their home, an inalienable possession
from which they were expelled by force…Why shall not the powers which under the
treaty of Berlin, in 1878, gave Bulgaria to the Bulgarians and Servia to the
Servians now give Palestine back to the Jews?’[xxi]

Although President Harrison did not act upon the petition, it
was nevertheless pivotal in galvanising Christian and Jewish Zionist activists
in the United States for the next sixty years. Justice Louis Brandeis, the
first Jewish Justice of the US Supreme Court, who led the Jewish Zionist
movement in the US from 1914, became a close friend of Blackstone and for
twenty years they laboured to convince the American people and in particular,
successive Presidents, to support the Zionist agenda. During that time,
Blackstone sent Brandeis ‘very large sums of money for support of Zionist
work.’[xxii]Responsible for disbursing millions of
dollars of dispensational funds entrusted to him for missionary work,
Blackstone promised Brandeis that if he should not be raptured with Blackstone,
he was to use the funds for the relief of Jews who would come to believe in
Christ and need supporting as missionaries throughout the world during the
millennium.[xxiii]

In 1917, Blackstone was
excited by the developments in Palestine following the defeat of the Turks and
the triumphal entry of the Allies into Jerusalem. In January 1918, he spoke at
a large Jewish Zionist meeting in Los Angeles and declared that he had been
committed to Zionism for 30 years.

‘This is because I believe
that true Zionism is founded on the plan, purpose, and fiat of the everlasting
and omnipotent God, as prophetically recorded in His Holy Word, the Bible.’

During his lifetime, Jewish Zionists honoured Blackstone more
times than any other Christian leader. On one occasion, Brandeis wrote, ‘you
are the Father of Zionism as your work antedates Herzl.’[xxiv]In 1918, Elisha Friedman, Secretary of
the University Zionist Society of New York, similarly declared, ‘A well known
Christian layman, William E. Blackstone, antedated Theodor Herzl by five years
in his advocacy of the re-establishment of a Jewish State.’[xxv]What Blackstone expressed in his
speeches, books and petitions, Cyrus Scofield was to systematise in his
Reference Bible.

6. Cyrus Scofield: The Canonising of Zionism
(1843-1921)

Scofield may be regarded as the most influential exponent of
Dispensationalism, following the publication of hisScofield
Reference Bibleby
the Oxford University Press in 1918.[xxvi]

Yet while biographical works on the early Brethren, such as J.
N. Darby and dispensationalists like D. L. Moody abound, Scofield remains an
elusive and enigmatic figure. As a young and largely illiterate
Christian, Scofield was profoundly influenced by J. N. Darby’s writings.
Scofield popularised Darby’s distinction between God’s plan for the Jews apart
from the Church, basing his reference notes on Darby’s own distinctive
translation of the Bible.[xxvii]The combination of an attractive
format, illustrative notes, and cross references has led both critics and
advocates to acknowledge Scofield’s Bible to have been the most influential
book among evangelicals during the first half of the 20thcentury.[xxviii]Craig Blaising, professor of
Systematic Theology at Dallas Theological Seminary acknowledges, ‘TheScofield
Reference Biblebecame the Bible of Fundamentalism, and
the theology of the notes approached confessional status in many Bible schools,
institutes and seminaries established in the early decades of this Century.’[xxix]Sandeen observes, ‘The book has thus
been subtly but powerfully influential in spreading those views among hundreds
of thousands who have regularly read that Bible and who often have been unaware
of the distinction between the ancient text and the Scofield interpretation.’[xxx]

Scofield’s influence extended well beyond his published
writings. In the 1890s during Scofield’s pastorate in Dallas he was also head
of the Southwestern School of the Bible, the forerunner to Dallas Theological
Seminary, which became Dispensationalism’s ‘most scholarly institution’.[xxxi]The Seminary was founded in 1924 by
one of Scofield’s disciples, Lewis Sperry Chafer, who in turn became Scofield’s
most influential exponent.

7. Arno C. Gaebelein: The Protocols of the
Elders of Zion

Arno Gaebelein is probably the most complex and controversial of
the early dispensationalists, principally for his views on prophecy, the Jews
and Zionism. Gaebelein is distinguished for being the source of the prophetic
notes in Scofield’s Reference Bible.[xxxii]He was also a regular speaker at the
Niagara Prophecy Conferences, and lectured at Dallas Theological Seminary.[xxxiii]In 1893, Gaebelein began publishing a
periodical in Yiddish,Tiqweth Israel – The Hope of Israel Monthly.
A year later Stroeter came to work with him and edited an English version
calledOur Hopewhich
was for Christians. The specific purpose of this periodical was to acquaint
them with the Zionist movement and proclaim the imminent return of Christ.[xxxiv]Gaebelein’s prophetic interpretations,
for example, led him to deduce that NATO was to become the ten kings of the
revived Roman Empire.[xxxv]

Gaebelein has also at times been accused of anti-Semitism.[xxxvi]For example, in response to the
publication of theProtocols of the Elders of Zion, a
spurious work alleging to be the secret plans of a worldwide Jewish conspiracy
to undermine civil authority, destroy Christianity and take over the
international economy, Gaebelein wrote:

‘… they certainly laid out a path for the revolutionary Jews
that has been strictly and literally followed. That the Jew has been a
prominent factor in the revolutionary movements of the day, wherever they may
have occurred, cannot truthfully be denied, any more than that it was a Jew who
assassinated, with all his family, the former Autocrat of all the Russians; or
than that a very large majority (said to be over 80%) of the present Bolshevist
government in Moscow, are Jews: while along other lines, in the assembly of the
League of Nations, the Jew’s voice is heard, and it is by no means a plaintive,
timid, or uninfluential one—the Jew is the coming man!’[xxxvii]

Two months later Gaebelein wrote about the ‘Jewish Leadership in
Russia.’ claiming that forty-four out of fifty of the Bolshevik leaders were of
Jewish origin. Weber describes this apparent contradiction as ‘ironic
ambivalence’, suggesting that premillennial prophetic views like those of
Gaebelein, ‘enabled them to give credence to the Protocols(and
thereby sound anti-Semitic) even though they had been and remained staunch
opponents of anti-Semitism.’[xxxviii]Gaebelein clearly had no illusions as
to the origin or motives of the Zionist movement, which he regarded as
‘apostate’, yet he could also write about, ‘the return of the Jews to Palestine
in unbelief is before us in modern Zionism, therefore it is the most startling
sign of all the signs of our times.’[xxxix]In the pages ofOur
Hope[xl]Gaebelein frequently reported
with enthusiasm the development of the various Zionist colonization societies
in Palestine, supported the efforts of Herzl and informed a still largely
ignorant and complacent American Christian community how prophecy was indeed
being fulfilled in Palestine. Although dispensationalists in the early 20thCentury
continued to see in such events as the rise of communism, the Balfour
Declaration and rise of anti-Semitism, evidence of the imminent return of
Christ, there was a gradual decline in the ‘intellectual prestige of
Fundamentalism.’[xli]

8. Anti-Semitism and American Liberal
Christian Zionism(1918-1967)

In the period from 1918 right up to 1948, increasingly secular
arguments were made for the Zionist cause, with a ‘decreasing use of explicitly
theological vocabulary.’[xlii]American foreign policy was
increasingly determined by the need to maintain good relations with the
strategic oil-rich Arab nations at the very same time America was engaged in a
race to prevent Soviet hegemony. As the American political establishment began
to show less enthusiasm for Blackstone’s Memorial, the Jewish Zionist movement
discovered more influential friends among liberal church leaders who had
greater leverage with the Presidency and were more interested in Jewish rights
than converting them and fulfilling prophecy. Naim Ateek observes,

As the British Empire
waned, the Zionist state cleverly and shrewdly connected itself with the rising
American Empire and gradually was able to occupy strategic positions within all
of its governing branches – the Congress, Pentagon, State Department, and the
White House.

In the early 20thCentury, following the devastating
toll of the First World War and then the Great Depression, Fundamentalism in
America became more and more preoccupied with refuting liberal theology, the
social gospel and Darwinian evolution than with prophetic speculation. In a
detailed history of the rise of 20thCentury American Fundamentalism prior
to 1970, Erling Jorstad traces the rise of the Christian right with its
anti-Communist and xenophobic agenda, yet without a single reference to Israel.[xliii]

Similarly, in George Marsden’s historical overview of the rise
of Fundamentalism and Evangelicalism in America, he observes that despite some
evidence of anti-Semitism, in the early 20thCentury there seemed little interest
in contemporary Israel among conservative evangelicals.[xliv]Others such as David Rausch have
traced in more detail the rise of anti-Semitism within early 20thcentury
Christian Fundamentalism.[xlv]

For example, in 1919, aware that the British and French were
undermining his goal of self-determination in Syria, Woodrow Wilson sent
Charles Crane, a wealthy American Arabist as head of the King-Crane Commission
to investigate the wishes of the indigenous people. Reservations expressed by
Arab leaders and expatriate Americans led Crane’s Commission to recommend the
abandonment of American support for a Jewish homeland, that further Jewish
immigration be severely restricted and America or Britain govern Palestine.
While Crane went on to help finance the first explorations for oil in Saudi
Arabia and the Yemen, his admiration for Hitler’s Germany ‘the real political
bulwark of Christian culture’, and of Stalin’s anti-Jewish purges in Soviet
Russia, led his biographer to describe his later life as dominated by, ‘a most
pronounced prejudice … [and] … unbridled dislike of Jews.’ Crane tried to
persuade President Franklin D. Roosevelt to shun the counsels of Felix
Frankfurter and to avoid appointing other Jews to government posts. Crane
‘envisioned a world-wide attempt on the part of the Jews to stamp out all
religious life and felt that only a coalition of Muslims and Roman Catholics
would be strong enough to defeat such designs.’ In 1933, he even proposed to
Haj Amin Husseini, the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem, that the Mufti open talks with
the Vatican to plan an anti-Jewish campaign.[xlvi]The
reasoning behind opposition by American missionaries to the founding of the
State of Israel is a complex one. In 1948, weeks before the State of Israel was
declared, Bayard Dodge who had founded the American University in Beirut,
retired to Princeton in New Jersey. In April 1948, he wrote a watershed article
inThe Readers Digestentitled,
‘Must There Be War in the Middle East?’ Kaplan describes it as the ‘definitive
statement’ of American Arabists on the birth of the State of Israel.

‘Though he cautioned, “Not all Jews are Zionist and not all
Zionists are extremists”, for Dodge the Zionist movement was a tragedy of which
little good could come… Dodge’s argument against Zionism rests, not on the
politics of the movement, but on the Arabs’ opposition to it, which in Dodge’s
view made the Zionist program unrealistic and therefore dangerous. Years and
decades of strife would, Dodge knew, follow the birth of the Jewish State. As a
result, wrote Dodge, “All the work done by our philanthropic non-profit
American agencies in the Arab world – our Near East Foundation, our missions,
our YMCA and YWCA, our Boston Jesuit college in Baghdad, our colleges in Cairo,
Beirut, Damascus – would be threatened with complete frustration and collapse …
so would our oil concessions”, a scenario that Dodge said would help Communist
Russia. Dodge then quoted a fellow “American Middle East expert” as saying that
“they [the Russians] intend to get many thousands of Russian Communist Jews
into the Palestinian Jewish State.”’[xlvii]

Kaplan argues that Dodge’s
views were representative of the wider expatriate and missionary community who
believed the US, British and Russians morally and politically wrong to railroad
the partition of Palestine through the United Nations.

Richard Crossman who was a member of the Anglo-American team
investigating the Palestine crisis in 1947, observed that the American
Protestant missionaries, ‘challenged the Zionist case with all the arguments of
the most violently pro-Arab British Middle Eastern officials.’[xlviii]Kaplan concludes, ‘the American
community in Lebanon was almost, to a man, psychologically opposed to the State
of Israel.’[xlix]

In his memoirs, Harry Truman also
claims his post-war State Department specialists were opposed to the idea of a
Jewish State because they either wanted to appease the Arabs or because they
were anti-Semitic.[l] During the 1930s and
1940s, both prior to and after the founding of the State of Israel, the
principal allies of Zionism were liberal Protestant Christians such as Paul
Tillich, William F. Albright and Reinhold Niebuhr who founded the Christian
Council on Palestine in 1942.[li]Niebuhr, who was Professor of Social
Ethics at Union Theological Seminary, defended his Zionism on pragmatic rather
than religious grounds. Jewish persecution in Europe combined with restrictive
immigration laws in America led Niebuhr to recognise the ‘moral right’ of the
Jews to Palestine in order for them to survive as a nation.[lii]In 1946, he testified before the
Anglo-American Committee of Inquiry in Washington on behalf of the Christian
Council on Palestine. While acknowledging the conflicting rights of Arabs and
Jews in Palestine, he argued:

‘The fact however that the Arabs have a vast hinterland in the
Middle East, and the fact that the Jews have nowhere to go, establishes the
relative justice of their claims and of their cause … Arab sovereignty over a
portion of the debated territory must undoubtedly be sacrificed for the sake of
establishing a world Jewish homeland.’[liii]

In 1958, by which time he
was at odds with most other liberal Protestant leaders, Niebuhr continued to
insist on a wider definition of Christian Zionism. In, ‘The Relation of
Christians and Jews in Western Civilization’ he wrote,

‘Many Christians are pro-Zionist in the sense that they believe
that a homeless people require a homeland; but we feel as embarrassed as
anti-Zionist religious Jews when messianic claims are used to substantiate the
right of the Jews to the particular homeland in Palestine.’[liv]

Apart from wishing to see
Arabs ‘compensated’, Niebuhr did not appear to support the view that
Palestinians also ‘require a homeland’.

9. The Rebirth of American Evangelical
Christian Zionism.

For Evangelicals, the founding of the State of Israel in 1948
came to be seen as the most significant fulfilment of biblical prophecy,[lv]and ‘the greatest piece of prophetic
news that we have had inthe 20thCentury.’[lvi]The 1967 ‘Six Day War’ marked a
further significant watershed for evangelical Christian interest in Israel and
Zionism. Billy Graham’s father-in-law Nelson Bell, then editor ofChristianity
Today,expressed the
sentiments of many evangelicals when, in an editorial for the magazine he
wrote,

‘for the first time in more than 2,000 years Jerusalem is now
completely in the hands of the Jews gives a student of the Bible a thrill and a
renewed faith in the accuracy and validity of the Bible.’[lvii]

In 1976 a series of events brought Christian Zionism to the
forefront of US mainstream politics. Jimmy Carter was elected as the ‘born
again’ President drawing the support of the evangelical right. In Israel,
Menachem Begin and the right wing Likud Party came to power the following year.
A tripartite coalition slowly emerged between the political Right, evangelicals
and the Jewish lobby. In 1978, Jimmy Carter acknowledged how his own
pro-Zionist beliefs had influenced his Middle East policy.[lviii]In a speech, he described the State of
Israel as, ‘a return at last, to the biblical land from which the Jews were
driven so many hundreds of years ago … The establishment of the nation of
Israel is the fulfilment of biblical prophecy and the very essence of its
fulfilment.’[lix]

However, when Carter
vacillated over the aggressive Likud settlement programme and proposed the
creation of a Palestinian homeland, he alienated the pro-Israeli coalition of
Jews and evangelicals who switched their support to Ronald Reagan in the 1980
elections. Reagan’s election as President gave a considerable boost to the
Christian Zionist cause. His election:

‘…ushered in not only the most pro-Israel administration in
history but gave several Christian Zionists prominent political posts. In
addition to the President, those who subscribed to a futurist premillennial
theology and Christian Zionism included Attorney General Ed Meese, Secretary of
Defence Casper Weinberger, and Secretary of the Interior James Watt.’[lx]

‘White House Seminars’ became a regular feature of Reagan’s
administration bringing leading Christian Zionists like Jerry Falwell, Mike
Evans and Hal Lindsey into direct personal contact with national and
Congressional leaders. In 1982, Reagan invited Falwell to give a briefing to
the National Security Council on the possibility of a nuclear war with Russia.[lxi]In a personal conversation reported in
theWashington Postin
April 1984, Reagan shared his personal convictions to Tom Dine, one of Israel’s
chief lobbyists working for the American Israel Public Affairs Committee
(AIPAC):

‘You know, I turn back to the ancient prophets in the Old
Testament and the signs foretelling Armageddon, and I find myself wondering if
– if we’re the generation that is going to see that come about. I don’t know if
you’ve noted any of these prophecies lately, but believe me they certainly
describe the times we’re going through.’[lxii]

While subsequent Presidents have not shared the same
dispensational presuppositions of either Jimmy Carter or Ronald Reagan, they
nevertheless have maintained, however reluctantly, the strong pro-Zionist
position of their predecessors.[lxiii]

10. The Significance of Contemporary Christian
Zionism

Like Elisha, Pastor John Hagee appears to have assumed the
mantle of Jerry Falwell who died in 2007. Hagee is the Founder and Senior
Pastor of Cornerstone Church, an 19,000 member evangelical church in San
Antonio in Texas. He is also CEO of Global Evangelism Television which
broadcasts his programmes on 160 T.V. stations, 50 radio stations and eight
networks into an estimated99 millionhomes
in200 countriesworldwide
on a weekly basis. In 2006 he foundedChristians
United for Israelwith
the support of 400 other Christian leaders. Last year he admitted:

“For 25 almost 26 years now, I have been pounding the
evangelical community over television. The bible is a very pro-Israel book. If
a Christian admits “I believe the Bible,” I can make him a pro-Israel supporter
or they will have to denounce their faith. So I have the Christians over a
barrel, you might say.”[lxiv]

The assumption Hagee makes,
that Bible-believing Christians will be pro-Israel, is now the dominant view
among contemporary evangelicals. In March 2007, Hagee was a guest speaker at
the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) Policy Conference. He
began with these words:

“The sleeping giant of
Christian Zionism has awakened. There are 50 million Christians standing up and
applauding the State of Israel…”

As the Jerusalem Post
pointed out, his speech did not lack clarity. He went on to warn:

“It is 1938. Iran is Germany, and Ahmadinejad is the new Hitler.
We must stop Iran’s nuclear threat and stand boldly with Israel, the only
democracy in the Middle East… Think of our potential future together: 50
million evangelicals joining in common cause with 5 million Jewish people in
America on behalf of Israel is a match made in heaven.”[lxv]

At the July 19th, 2006
Washington DC inaugural event for Christians United for Israel, after recorded
greeting from George W. Bush, and in the presence of four US Senators as well
as the Israeli ambassador to the US, Hagee stated :

”The United States must join Israel in a pre-emptive military
strike against Iran to fulfill God’s plan for both Israel and the West… a
biblically prophesied end-time confrontation with Iran, which will lead to the
Rapture, Tribulation, and Second Coming of Christ.”[lxvi]

Are we therefore surprised when Muslims wrongly assume that such
views reflect Christianity as a whole? So how significant is this
movement in America? The Pew Forum on Religion and Public Lifeestimates there are20-40 millionChristian
Zionists in America.The Unity Coalition for Israeldraws together over 200 different
organizations and claims 40 million active members. Other influential Christian
Zionist organisations include the International Christian Embassy, Jerusalem
(ICEJ), Bridges for Peace (BFP) and Christian Friends of Israel (CFI. Together
with Christians United for Israel (CUFI) and the Unity Coalition for Israel
(UCI), these organisations make up a broad coalition which is shaping not only
the Christian Zionist agenda but also influencing US foreign policy in the
Middle East today. Their political agenda is multifaceted. They are actively engaged
in:

§Lobbying
the White House and Congress on behalf of Israel.

§Funding
the emigration of Russian Jews to Israel through organisations such as Exobus
and ICEJ.

§Campaigning
to move the US embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem to ensure it is recognised as
the exclusive, undivided eternal capital of the Jewish people.

§Denigrating
the democratically elected Palestinian leadership and thwarting their
aspirations to statehood.

§Vilifying
pro-justice Christian leaders who challenge Zionism and demonising peace and
justice networks and NGOs within the mainline churches.

11. Conclusions: The Way Forward

Is there any sign that the
re-election of President Barak Obama on Tuesday will result in any change in US
Middle East policy or will we simply try harder to impose our definition of
peace and our version of democracy? Bacevich observes that our mistake is in,

“viewing history as
ultimately a good-news story. If the good news appears mingled with bad, the
imperative of the faithful is to try harder. Forget about Baghdad and Kabul:
onward to Damascus and Tehran.”

Naim Ateek insists, there is no such thing as “benevolent
empire”.[lxvii]Because of the special relationship,
Israel has become an integral part of the American Empire. The economic,
military and political bonds are so intertwined they are unbreakable,
regardless of whether the Democratic or Republican party are in power. It is
therefore impossible at present for the US to be an honest broker in the peace
process. Are we therefore surprised at the violence and antipathy
directed toward the United States in the Middle East? Secretary Clinton rightly
observed that Ambassador Stevens along with other US diplomats, put their lives
at risk “because they believe that the United States must be a force for peace
and progress.” Bacevich asks,

“But in the face of decade
upon decade of contrary experience, what could possibly convince Libyans or
Egyptians, Iraqis or Iranians, Afghans or Pakistanis that such faith in
America’s idealism has any basis in fact?… The United States has aligned itself
all too often with the forces of despotism and oppression… And this tendency
has persisted even on Secretary Clinton’s watch; just look at the response to
the Arab Awakening’s appearance in Bahrain.”

He concludes with a
challenge that we must take seriously if we are to avoid being held
responsible, for the extinction of the indigenous Christian community right
across the Middle East.

“If we Americans think we have something to teach others, lets
do it as exemplars – that is, assuming we are willing to close the yawning gap
between the values we loudly profess and the way we actually behave.”[lxviii]

Surely this must be our
primary task if we as Evangelicals are ever to have a significant impact in the
Middle East again for the sake of the gospel and the extension of Christ’s
kingdom.

[ii] A small number of
19thCentury
Postmillennial theologians did continue to espouse a form of Jewish
Restorationism but only as a consequence of Jewish people coming to faith in
Jesus and being incorporated within the Church. These include Charles Simeon
(1759-1836) and David Brown (1803-1897), who was Edward Irving’s assistant at
Regent Square and who wroteThe Second Advent(1849)
andThe Restoration of Israel,
(1861). Erroll Hulse also identifies with this position,The Restoration of Israel,
(Worthing, Henry Walter, 1968). Since the Restorationist movement became
dominated by Covenant premillennialists and dispensationalists from the early
19thCentury,
this thesis has concentrated on their contribution. The previous chapter has
explored the early intimations of proto-Christian Zionism within the
Reformation and Puritan period which was dominated by Postmillennialists. See
Arnold Fruchtenbaum,Israelology, The Missing Link in Systematic Theology,
(Tustin, California, Ariel Ministries, 1989), pp14-122.

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The End Times Passover

Joe Ortiz has the distinction of being the first Mexican American in US history to conduct a talk show on an English-language, commercial radio station. He began his broadcasting career in 1971 at KABC TALK RADIO 790 AM in the highly competitive Los Angeles media market. He went on to become an award-winning broadcaster, news reporter and newspaper columnist in Los Angeles for over 30 years. Semi-retired, he promotes his three books on theology, is the President of the "Official Tom Flores Fan Club" and manages several blogs and web sites, and his public relations consulting company at Joe Ortiz Associates ~